Blue chip stocks are better, myth or fact? : the performance of blue chip indices (June 1979 - June 1994)

• Main Authors: Chang, Kok Boon, Chua, Roger Yeong Kwang, Ng, Raymond Boon Huat
• Other Authors: Nanyang Business School
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Business::Accounting
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/55763
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The key motivating factor that prompted us to engage in this project on the performance of the blue chip indices in the stock market stems from the recent increasing interest of Singaporeans in stocks investment. The successful issue of the Telecom shares was the historical step put forward by the government towards share-ownership. We propose the research on the performance ofblue chip indices because we feel that the project would help investors in deciding which stocks to invest and to confirm the belief that blue chip stocks are superior in performance. Blue chip stocks consist mainly of companies with strong fmancial position and high growth potential. Hence, investment in blue chip stocks may yield stable and lucrative dividends. A study is made on the performance of the DBS 50 Index (DBS 50), OCBC 30 Index (OCBC 30) and UOB Blue Chip Index (UOB Blue Chip) relative to the SES AllSingapore Index which is used as the market surrogate. Investigation covers 15 years from June 1979 to June 1994, partitioned into three equal sub-periods (June 1979- June 1984, June 1984-June 1989 and June 1989-June 1994) for scrutiny. In particular, the last sub-period will be the period of focus for the analysis of the market sector performance. The methodology involves regression analysis of the excess monthly returns of the three blue chip indices against that of the SES All-Singapore (The excess monthly returns were computed based on the closing indices as on the last trading day of each month).The results of which were used in computing three risk-adjusted performance measures: the Jensen, Treynor and Sharpe indices. The main regression of 15 years sees all the three blue chip indices having the same performance as the market or marginally outperformed the market. However, for the last sub-period, the indices computed show underperformance of the market. Individual market sectors returned mixed results for the period from June 1989 to June 1994. The Finance sector showed the greatest outperformance of the market for this period while the Industrial & Commercial sector and the Hotel sector marginally underperformed the market. For the Property sector, the Jensen and Treynor indices computed show a marginal overperformance of the market, whereas the Sharpe index shows an underperformance of the market by 0.4 %. The blue chip indices are shown to have outperformed the market over the last 15 years - a fmancially rewarding experience for any investor in blue chip stocks during the period.